Rolling Back the Years

Far & Wild travel is a new business. But its roots stretch a long way back.

I’ve been organising tailor-made trips to for nearly 20 years now. My first job in Africa travel was working for an inspirational man called Roger Diski at a tiny company that started out life as a way to support the anti apartheid movement in South Africa (they wanted to smuggle guns to the ANC, so they set up a overland trucks business for tourists, and – unbeknown to anyone – used their trucks to smuggle weapons over the borders and into South Africa). The point is Roger wanted to make a difference first and, and run a successful travel company second. (You can read more about Roger here)

After a couple of years learning from Roger, I struck out on my own, setting up and running my own tailor-made tour operator. Over 10 years that followed that company grew into a thriving 50 person company organising holidays all over the world and culminating in my selling the business in 2015 – the same year that we were recognised as the leading specialist luxury tour operator at the British Travel Awards. But unlike Roger, our success came because of my focus on running a successful travel company first… and making a difference, a very distant second.

Roll forward some 12 months, and I happened to meet an old friend Derek Schuurman who also worked with Roger. The combination of meeting Derek and having some time to reflect on the hectic 10 years I’d spent building a successful travel business – slowly led to the realisation… actually I could go one better than either Roger or I had done done previously. If I could build a travel company that was genuinely progressive and had the right core values – the result would be: a business that was successful BECAUSE it was making a difference. And that is how Far & Wild Travel came into being.

You read this at the start of this journey and – if you choose to travel with us or just recommend us to friends who might – then you’ll be making a valuable contribution to our very special brand of success.